PhpStorm 2016.3 Help

Scope

Basics

A scope is a subset of files, and/or directories in your project, to which you can limit the
application of specific operations, e.g. search, code inspection,
etc. Besides, you can configure coloring
for each scope to see at once what sort of file you are dealing with.

Scopes get more helpful as your project grows larger. There are a lot of predefined scopes that cover basic cases.
Additionally, it is possible to add custom scopes to your project.
For example, you can create custom scopes for tests or for the files you are responsible for in your team.

Types of scopes

Scopes can be either shared or local:

Shared scopes are accessible for the team members via VCS and are stored at the project level.
in the scopes directory under .idea, as a file with the extension
xml, i.e. .idea/scopes/<scope_name>.xml.

Local scopes are intended for personal use only and are stored in your workspace
in the file workspace.xml under .idea
.

By selecting files and folders and clicking the buttons Include,
Include Recursively, Exclude, and Exclude Recursively.
Based on the inclusion/exclusion, PhpStorm creates an expression and displays it in the Pattern.

Scopes coloring

Files belonging to different scopes can be highlighted in different colors throughout the PhpStorm's
user interface: in navigation lists, in the editor tabs,
in the Project window .
This allows much faster and easier navigation in large projects.

If some file is included into several scopes, the order of the scopes becomes important:
PhpStorm uses the color of the uppermost scope (shown in the
Scopes
settings page) to highlight such file.
Of course, you can change the order of the scopes, and thus the resulted highlighting.

Project Production Files.
This scope is similar to the
Project Files scope.
The difference is that the test source roots are not included.
In the
Project tool window, this scope corresponds to
the scope view
Production.

Project Test Files.
This scope is limited to the project test source roots.
In the
Project tool window, this scope corresponds to
the scope view
Tests.

Non-Project Files.
This scope is available only as a view in the
Project tool window.
It is limited to libraries and SDKs.

Changed Files.
This scope corresponds to all changed files, that is, ones associated with
all existing
changelists.

Default.
This scope corresponds to the files associated with
the
changelistDefault.